I want the shop to be big! Not only do I have a lot of tools, but I tend to frequently bring tools in for testing. As you probably know by now, I also do a lot of filming. So I need a space big enough to allow for full movement around most of the tools. My tripod has a pretty good-sized footprint and having more room allows me to get the best vantage point possible. More space will also allow me to stage larger pieces of furniture, whether for the show or for jobs I take on locally.
Up until about ten years ago, if you were in the process of starting a small business and wanted to use all of the technologies listed at the start of this section, you would have needed to take out a second mortgage to cover the bill. Investing in retail technology has historically involved expensive hardware (including an in-house server), large upfront software costs, and hefty ongoing bills for customer support or repairs when things went wrong. Innovators were targeting large-scale enterprises like Coca-Cola, not local mom and pops, so the packages and price points were designed to match.

Finding reliable cellular service (and the internet that comes with it) is a constant challenge in vanlife, especially if you do computer-based work on the road. A cell signal booster like the WeBoost Drive 4G-X helps a lot in areas where service is spotty. It can take a weak cellular signal and amplify it into usable internet for web browsing and getting work done.

It looks great. Your little guy looks like he's having fun. I just had over 50 kids come through my shop last weekend to do some woodworking for cub scouts. I am saving left over insulation to put in there soon. I restocked my plywood recently too. The pieces of pipe made it much easier to pack in a lot of heavy pieces. I also took the time to measure lengths and mark the ends of all my lumber in the hatch under my bench to find what I need a little easier. My $100 8x8 needs a little TLC soon. But the shop is still rock solid. If you plan on making a lot of dust, I would also suggest a diy air filter with a box fan and a cheap air filter. It helps a little.

Reactions are typically over-the-top excitement. Everywhere I go, there are people snapping pictures, taking videos, and giving me a “thumbs up.” Sometimes while on the highway, cars will go ahead of me about a mile or so and then pull over to get out and video me driving by them. Truck drivers are always getting on the CB radio asking about the truck.
By contrast, when it comes to marketing, small business owners have historically been asked to take a leap of faith, spending money without any clear sense of how much positive impact it will have on their business. Put bluntly, learning how to market a small business can be perplexing. In essence, traditional small business marketing techniques have escaped any clearly definable return on investment (ROI) analysis. It’s for this reason that so many small business owners write off marketing as if it were a get-rich-quick gimmick. When, in reality, it’s at the heart of any successful business.
The right first step online for most stores and restaurants is creating a Google Local Business Listing. Google accounts for 90% of all global organic search traffic and more and more of that traffic is coming from mobile devices. Chances are, your customers are using Google to find you, so you’ll want to make sure your hours, description, contact details, address, and images are all accurate.
Hey Ted! If you mean to ask whether you could sit up from one of the vertical sidebins and have enough headroom under the Leer 122, I think that would be a no. You’d have to build the sidebins to be a little shorter. At least with my truck, that would be the case. Perhaps with a full-size pickup you would have enough room thanks to the overall size increase of the canopy as well.
I looked around at many versions of Taiwanese drill presses. I ended up purchasing the Ridgid DP15501 15" drill press because I liked the way the quill stop was made, the work light, key stor­age, and the easy access to the belt change system. This machine was also on sale when I needed it, so that made it a slam dunk. Choose the one that suits you, as they’re all very similar. The table is large enough, and the distance to the column is large enough to allow you to do most anything a small shop needs.
Non-Standard Miter Slots - This one is a downer. One of the primary advantages of having a table saw is access to jigs that expand the saws functionality. This is a major issue if you plan on buying after market jigs. Given that we are limiting the cost of this buildout to $500, I am guessing that after market jigs are probably low on the priority list. Your going to want jigs once you start researching what they enable you to do, my advice is to build your own - there are plenty of plans online.